Concrete, Immediate US Action Needed to Implement the Policy of Three US Presidents on the Western Sahara

In this month's MIT International Review, former senior US diplomats highlight urgent need to implement long-standing US policy supporting autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty for Western Sahara

WASHINGTON, April 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As the UN Security Council takes action on renewing MINURSO, the UN peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, an article proposing concrete steps for resolving the decades-old conflict was published today by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's International Review.  In the article, former US Ambassador to Morocco Edward M. Gabriel and former Foreign Service Officer Robert M. Holley call for immediate action to implement US policy supporting a compromise solution based on broad autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. Gabriel was US Ambassador and Holley was Political Counselor at the US Embassy in Morocco when the policy was adopted during the Clinton Administration.  Both were active participants in the review that led to the policy's formulation.

Gabriel and Holley provide in-depth analysis of why the current US Western Sahara policy was initiated during the Clinton Administration, its continued support by the Bush and Obama Administrations, and the support of bipartisan majorities in the US House and Senate.  The authors call for specific concrete actions to fully implement the policy, end three decades of conflict in the area, and prevent a failed state in North Africa:

• lifting the current US State Department ban on visits to Western Sahara by senior US officials, including Ambassadors in Morocco and Algeria;
• rescinding restrictions on US development assistance funds in the disputed territory; and
• aligning State Department bureaucrats' internal decision-making vis-a-vis the Western Sahara with US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's recent remarks.

In remarks last November during a trip to Morocco, Secretary Clinton reaffirmed US policy that, "This is a plan that originated in the Clinton Administration. It was reaffirmed in the Bush Administration and it remains the policy of the United States in the Obama Administration. […] I don't want anyone in the region or elsewhere to have any doubt about our policy, which remains the same." [http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/11/131354.htm].

** For full text of the article, "US Policy on the Western Sahara: Implementing the Policy of Three Presidents," please visit: [http://www.mitir-magazine.com/]**

The MIT International Review is an interdisciplinary journal of international affairs which aspires to support solution-oriented discourse on challenges facing the global community.

The Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP) is a non-profit organization whose principal mission is to inform opinion makers, government officials, and interested publics in the United States about political and social developments in Morocco and the role being played by the Kingdom of Morocco in broader strategic developments in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.  For more, please visit www.moroccanamericanpolicy.org.

This material is distributed by the Moroccan American Center for Policy on behalf of the Government of Morocco.  Additional information is available at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC.

SOURCE Moroccan American Center for Policy